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Human sciences
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5.1 Introduction to human sciences
What are human sciences?
In May 2010, an article entitled ‘Growth in a time of debt’ appeared in the American
Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings. The title was modest and the paper was short
(barely 6 pages long) but its influence was enormous. In it, the authors, economists
Professor Carmen Reinhart and former chief economist of the International Monetary
Fund, Professor Kenneth Rogoff, both of Harvard University, suggested that there
was a link between high public debt and low economic growth. By examining data
about a number of countries, they concluded that high levels of government debt
were correlated with low economic growth. This research was seized on by many
governments in both economically developed and developing countries to justify a
sharp decrease in government spending: so-called austerity policy. Such policies have
had an enormous effect on millions of people through reduced government spending
on public services, social programmes, unemployment benefit, healthcare, and
education.
In April 2013, Thomas Herndon – a Master’s student in the economics
department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst – tried to
reproduce Reinhart and Rogoff’s findings. He found that he couldn’t reach
the same numerical conclusions as their paper.
He thought he’d made a gross error. It seemed most likely that he, as a
student, had made a mistake, not the Harvard professors. He met with his
professor, Michael Ash, who told him he needed to sort it out. But he still
couldn’t replicate the results. So with encouragement from his professors,
Herndon contacted Reinhart and Rogoff. After some correspondence,
they sent him the data set they had used together with the spreadsheet they
developed to analyse the data. And Herndon couldn’t believe his eyes! He
got his girlfriend to come over to check that his eyes weren’t deceiving him.
But he was correct. He had discovered a basic error in the spreadsheet:
Reinhart and Rogoff had only included 15 of the 20 countries in their
analysis in the key calculation of the average GDP growth in countries with
high public debt. Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark were
missing.
Later investigation showed that the situation might be even worse than expected. Here
is a report in the Huffington Post of 30 May 2013.
Thomas Herndon – the
student who unearthed the
flaw in Reinhart and Rogoff’s
paper.
paper.
The Harvard economists have argued that mistakes and omissions in their
influential research on debt and economic growth don’t change their ultimate
austerity-justifying conclusion: that too much debt hurts growth.
But even this claim has now been disproved by two new studies, which suggest the
opposite might in fact be true: Slow growth leads to higher debt, not the other way
around. … University of Michigan economics professor Miles Kimball and
On previous page – The
world population reached
7.2 billion in mid-2013.
Do an internet search for
‘Worldometers’ for a real-time
update of the current world
population.
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05 Human sciences

Reinhart and Rogoff issued a correction to their original paper, and pointed out that
they suggested a correlation between high public debt and low growth rather than
a causal connection. But the damage was already done. Their reputation has taken a
fairly severe knock and that of economics as a discipline with it.
Why study human sciences?
From a TOK point of view this case raises a number of interesting issues.
• How could an important paper such as this one, with big implications for crucial
public decision-making, not be peer-reviewed in the same way as a natural science
paper would be?
• What is the purpose of producing knowledge in the human sciences? Is it the same as
the purpose of the natural sciences?
• Is there a difference in the methods of the human sciences and those of the natural
sciences? Is there a difference in reliability?
• What is it about the ‘human factor’ in the human sciences that calls for different
approaches in the human sciences than the natural sciences?
We shall examine these questions in this chapter. But first, we have to establish exactly
what we mean by the human sciences.
Exercises
1 The authors of the economics paper claimed that they were merely suggesting that high debt was
correlated with low economic growth not that it was an actual cause. What extra evidence would
be needed on top of correlation to establish a causal link?
2 Mark each of the following statements ‘true’ or ‘false’ and try to produce reasons for your answers.
a The human sciences are more suited for governing social policy than the natural sciences.
b There is more space in the human sciences for personal factors such as political
preferences to play a role.
c It is not possible to make mistakes in the human sciences.
5.2 Scope and applications
Knowledge framework: Scope and applications – What is
the area of knowledge about?
Knowledge framework: Scope and applications – What
practical problems can be solved through applying this
knowledge?
Scope of human sciences
The disciplines that make up the AOK called the human sciences were staked out
beginning in the 18th century, with economics leading the way followed shortly
University of Michigan undergraduate student Yichuan Wang write that they have
crunched Reinhart and Rogoff’s data and found ‘not even a shred of evidence’ that
high debt levels lead to slower economic growth
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afterwards by sociology, psychology, anthropology, and political science. Some
are seen as venerable – economics, perhaps – demanding the respect that their
mathematical findings deserve, while newer human sciences are creeping in from the
margins. For instance, we find fields like gender studies, Asian studies, post-colonial
studies wanting the same respect as the old guard. But there are doubts. Does ‘studies’
mean the same thing as ‘science’? How is it that all these different fields belong within
the same academic boundary? Some divisions on this map of knowledge sometimes
look quite blurred, while others are in bold outline or not yet fully drawn. Are they all
human sciences? Are they, in fact, sciences?
To begin to answer this question, it is good to remember that the human sciences – or
social sciences as they are often called outside the IB – are diverse. While they differ in
subject matter they all are obliged to make some kind of evidence-based statements or
generalizations explaining the behaviour of human beings singly or as a group.
generalizations explaining the behaviour of human beings singly or as a group.
The aims of the psychology course at HL and SL are to:
• interpret and/or conduct psychological research … for the benefit of human
beings
• develop an awareness of how applications of psychology in everyday life are
derived from psychological theories
© International Baccalaureate, 2009
Varieties of human sciences
To get a fuller sense of the range of disciplines that make up the field of the human or
social sciences, you could thumb through a university prospectus. Depending on the
size of the university such courses may be collected together in one department called
anything from Faculty of Social Sciences to Faculty of Humanities and including (or
not) history and philosophy. However, traditionally both philosophy and history have
their own (quite extensive) faculties or departments and research agendas at the higher
academic levels.
It might be the case that the social sciences cannot be defined with satisfactory
precision for good reasons – although we continue to try – and that each discipline,
sub-discipline and discipline that would like to be known as a science should be
content with its own purposes, if not its own definitions. Yet it seems safe to say that
they are bound together by their common concern to investigate human beings in
some kind of context. A central knowledge question is, what special challenges arise as
a result of this concern?
IB group 3 was described as ‘The Study of Man’ until the protest of women forced a
change in the mid-1980s. It is now called ‘Individuals and Societies’. This change is
itself a topic worthy of investigation. But the group also includes disciplines such as
history and philosophy, areas not usually regarded as human sciences.
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05 Human sciences

Exercise
3 In this table, try to write a word or phrase that defines each discipline.
Field of study Definition
sociology
economics
anthropology
psychology
economic history
political science
communication
urban planning
criminology
gender studies
military science
linguistics
human geography
international relations
GLTG studies
Human sciences and natural sciences
How do we establish general patterns of human behaviour given that we take for
granted that human beings have a will and, to some extent, are free to exercise it?
At first sight, this does not seem too promising. Are we looking for absolute laws of
human behaviour analogous to the absolute laws of nature we seek in the natural
sciences? But surely any such law would be disrupted by the fact that human beings are
agents – we can decide how to act and could decide to act against the pattern, whatever
it was. Yet surely the human sciences speak in terms of generalizations that cover
human behaviour in general. We talk of laws of economics or laws of psychology. We
make generalizations about the pattern of human settlements in geography and we
confidently categorize people according to their socio-economic class in sociology.
Such problems don’t exist in a natural science such as physics because, frankly,
you can’t get an electron with attitude. Electrons don’t make decisions, they cannot
disrupt our universal laws, and each is exactly like every other electron in the universe
and follows the same laws. There is no space for individualism among electrons.
The picture gets a bit more complicated in biology since here we are studying living
organisms and some of them (especially the human ones) have a will. Nonetheless,
it is the physical aspects that are interesting to the biologist and they are covered by
the same deterministic laws. There is little mention of ‘will’, ‘desire’, or ‘intention’ in
a biology book despite the famous joke that ‘under controlled conditions of light,
temperature, humidity, and nutrition the organism will do as it d**n well pleases’.
Defining the disciplines of the
human sciences.
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This difference in subject matter leads us naturally to the different ways the human
sciences and the natural sciences handle exceptions to laws and generalizations.
Economists, for example, don’t get into a fluster if they discover an exception to one of
their laws. Physicists do (witness the outcry over the observation that was interpreted
as a neutrino travelling faster than the speed of light – Chapter 4, page 130). An
economist just shrugs off exceptions to the law – he or she just concludes that one of
the basic assumptions does not hold.
But if we encountered an exception to the law of physics that says the speed of light is
a universal speed limit, that would be front-page news. We would have a fundamental
contradiction between observation and theory that threatened the whole edifice of
current understanding of the physical world.
On the surface, both the natural sciences and the human sciences seem to be looking
for generalizations or laws. But dig a little deeper and it seems that the laws they
produce are rather different in type. Where this difference comes from is a central
knowledge question that deserves further investigation. But for a start, we could
guess that laws in the human sciences might be statistical: that we are dealing with
likelihoods rather than certainties. If this were true, it would have major implications
for our ability to predict.
The natural sciences are good at prediction. That is one of their main uses. The human
sciences, on the whole, are not so good. Very few people predicted the financial crisis
that hit the developed world in 2008 and the sharp global recession that followed it.
Those who did, such as Nouriel Roubini, now have superstar status. This is a job for us
to examine in TOK: to explain where these differences in predictive power come from.
After all, if we want to cure social problems and make a better world, we shall need
knowledge that has predictive as well as explanatory power.
Exercises
‘Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future’. (Nils Bohr)
Perhaps this view is relevant to the human sciences as well as to physics. It’s often easy to find a model that
fits the past data well but quite another matter to find a model that correctly identifies those features of the
past data that will be replicated in the future.
4 Can you think of an example in the human sciences where it is easy to have 20–20 hindsight but
very difficult to make predictions?
5 Why do you think that so few economists predicted the financial crisis in 2008?
6 Some phenomena in the natural sciences are also difficult to predict; for example, the occurrence
of earthquakes. Why is this? Are the factors the same here as in the case of making predictions in
economics?
Clearly, the role of the human being as both investigator and object of investigation
might go some way to understanding the difference between the human sciences and
the natural sciences. But it raises further questions.
• Is this feature of the human sciences something positive or does it hinder our
inquiries?
• Is it legitimate to draw on our personal experiences and inner intuitions in teasing
out patterns of human behaviour?
• Could it be that the experimenter through observing him- or herself as an object of
investigation is prone to wishful thinking, and observes precisely the sort of things that
he or she is looking for?
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
Economists derive some of
their laws from a basic set
of assumptions. The law of
demand (i.e. As the price of a
good increases, the quantity
demanded decreases.) is
derived from three premises:
• buying the good has an
opportunity cost (you could
have bought something else
with the money)
• marginal utility is
decreasing (e.g. the
satisfaction produced by the
consumption of each extra
chocolate bar decreases)
• human beings are rational
maximizers of utility
(we want to get the best
satisfaction for our money).
For an exception to the
law, one (or more) of these
assumptions must be violated.
Think of a real-world example
where the law of demand is
broken. Now work out which
of the assumptions above is
not true in that case.
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05 Human sciences

These questions will be taken further in the later sections on the participant observer.
It is sufficient now just to notice that they might help define the fault line between the
human and natural sciences.
The impersonal nature of their subject matter, the methods of replication of results, and
rigorous peer review render the natural sciences largely immune to these problems.
After all, by the 19th century, natural science methods were well enough established to
turn speculation into knowledge through balancing observation and theory.
And in this scientific age, the notions of rationality, objectivity, and prediction were
so linked to knowledge that the opinion began to form that all other disciplines pale
beside the claim of the hard sciences to give us the real map of the real world. And with
hard or positive knowledge comes power and prestige – and envy – such that other
disciplines want to model themselves on the methods of the natural sciences with the
implied assumption that the more scientific they are, the better.
Prescribed essay title 1: For some people, science is the supreme form of all
knowledge. Is this view reasonable or does it involve a misunderstanding of
science or knowledge?
© International Baccalaureate, November 2004, May 2005
Exercise
7 Go back to the list of human sciences at the beginning of this chapter and place them on a
continuum from ‘scientific’ to ‘non-scientific’. Which discipline turns out to be the most scientific
and which the least? How do you understand ‘scientific’ at this point?
What’s in a name?
But what does it mean to be a science? Surely some disciplines cannot, should not, or
would not want to be thought of as scientific. So while we may think that economics,
psychology, sociology, and anthropology make the strongest claim to be both ‘social’
– about humans interacting with one another – and ‘sciences’ – in setting out, or
searching for, general laws with a high degree of rigour in method, you can be sure that
there is always ongoing debate within (or even outside) the field. Here is an example
in anthropology from Nicholas Wade (2010) about a rift between members of the
American Anthropological Association (AAA).
American Anthropological Association (AAA).
Anthropology a science? Statement deepens a rift
Anthropologists have been thrown into turmoil about the nature and future of
their profession after a decision by the AAA at its recent annual meeting to strip
the word ‘science’ from a statement of its long-range plan.
The decision has reopened a long-simmering tension between two factions in
anthropology, those researchers in what they call a science-based discipline and
members who study race, ethnicity and gender and see themselves as advocates for
native peoples or human rights.
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To give you a sense of how much this matters to some within the organization –
and how it is more than a semantic issue – consider the words of Dr. Peregrine of
Lawrence University in Wisconsin who said that the dropping of the references to
science ‘just blows the top off’ the tensions between the two factions. Even if we go
back to the old wording, ‘the cat’s out of the bag and is running around clawing up
the furniture.’
Interestingly, the IB subject guide for Cultural and social anthropology does not
use the words ‘science’ or ‘scientific’ in its description of the course but it does use
‘understanding’ and ‘exploration’.
Exercises
8 On what basis did you make your subject choices in the IB Diploma programme? Did you choose
maths and the natural sciences over the arts and human sciences, or vice versa? Did you perceive
these AOKs as being fundamentally different? If so, in what way?
9 Do you think anthropology is a science? Does it matter?
10 Philosopher John Searle asks the provocative question: ‘Why are the human sciences so boring?’ Is
there not a sense in which they cannot match the extraordinary discoveries made by the natural
sciences and therefore the natural scientists might have some justification in being impatient with
them?
11 Why do you think it is that we are fairly good at understanding and curing physical illness but are
still rather poor at understanding and curing mental illness?
12 The Nobel Prize for economics is a separate institution by the Swedish Riksbank not in the original
gift of Alfred Nobel. Is economics an area that deserves a Nobel Prize given that mathematics does
not have one? Explain your reasoning.
5.3 Language and concepts
Knowledge framework: Language and concepts – What
role does language play in the accumulation of knowledge in
this area?
It is a good guess that we shall find language important in all areas of shared
knowledge because, let’s be blunt, how else can it be shared? This basic requirement
is explored in depth in Chapter 12. Language is particularly important for the human
sciences because: (a) they deal in social facts, which are constructed through language;
(b) we use language borrowed from other disciplines (quite often physics) in the social
sciences to help prime our intuitions – we call this use of language metaphor; and (c) like
other AOKs, language names key concepts. We shall need to discuss what difference it
makes that our objects of study can answer back because they are human. This means
that we can give them surveys and questionnaires to fill out. It also means that they can
report on their purported reasons for doing things. We might want to separate two key
concepts: ‘cause’ and ‘reason’. This is something that is not necessary when the object
of study is non-human (or at least non-linguistic). All of these things require language
and we might expect them to be sensitive to the sort of language used. Let us take each
of these features in turn.
To learn more about the
status of economics, visit
pearsonhotlinks.com,
enter the title or ISBN
of this book and select
weblink 5.1.
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Social facts
Social facts are an important feature of the world studied by human scientists. They
are facts such as whether a person is married or not, which side of the road we should
drive on, what currency to use, and how to greet the host at a party. They are facts
about human relationships and about human culture. In short, they are facts that
are constructed by us rather than being built into the fabric of the universe, and are
a necessary part of our social lives. Being so does not make them any less objectively
factual. It is a fact that Bangkok is the capital of Thailand. There is a right answer (and a
wrong answer) to the question: ‘What is the correct side of the road to drive on in New
Zealand?’ These facts are no less solid because they are the result of social interaction.
Non-social facts such as the fact that you will injure yourself if you jump out of a
fourth-storey window are called brute facts. So we could say, broadly speaking, that
brute facts are the concern of the natural sciences while social facts are the concern of
the human sciences.
The philosopher John Searle tells a nice story about how social facts might come
about. He asks us to imagine a city surrounded by a high wall. Let us suppose that the
laws of the city only apply within the wall. Over the years the wall falls into disrepair
and crumbles. But the laws of the city still hold within its boundary. Even when the
wall is just a line of bricks in the earth it still counts as the boundary of the city. It can no
longer physically contain the city or repel invaders but it functions as a social fact – the
boundary of the city. In other words, social facts are those that are established by the
group through formal agreement, informal practice, or even historical accident.
Social facts come into existence through a rather special use of language. In many
societies a person becomes guilty when a suitably appointed person such as a judge
says ‘you are guilty’ within the context of the institution of the criminal court. A piece
of paper becomes money when a particular person (usually the head of the central
bank) authorizes it. A goal is scored when the referee signals (using language) that
it is so. Two people are married when the appropriate authority makes a suitable
pronouncement in the appropriate circumstances, and so on. Social facts are made by
the right person saying the right thing, in the right place, at the right time. We shorten
this to saying that social facts are made by social institutions. And who makes social
institutions? We do.
In creating social facts, language is used not to describe the world but to change it. It
is almost magic. We call this usage ‘performative’. We shall return to this theme in the
next chapter on the arts but there is a word we used in the previous chapter that signals
that something is a social fact – ‘convention’.
The creation of social facts is important. It suggests that in the human sciences, we
are interested in the meanings that attach to such facts. In the world of brute facts,
meanings (at least in a first approximation) do not depend on us. The human sciences
study a world that is observer-relative because we are the makers of the facts to which
they refer. Take away all human observers and there would still be a solar system. But
take away human beings and there is no longer money, marriage, or law.
How social institutions develop and have the social-fact-producing powers that they
do is beyond the scope of this book but it is clear that human history is a constant
jiggling of such institutions. The sum total of such institutions and the social facts they
give rise to is called culture.
We have been discussing
the construction of
social facts in this
section. This is quite a
different matter from the
social construction
of facts. Unfortunately
many authors, some
of whom should know
better, confuse the two.
We have been suggesting
that there are some facts,
which we call social facts,
that are constructed
through social interaction.
Brute facts, on the other
hand, are independent of
society. The assumption
that all facts are socially
constructed needs
careful justification and
should not be accepted
uncritically.
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Exercises
13 Pick your own example of a social fact. Explain why it is so and identify the social institution that
produced it. (Remember that a social institution does not have to be an organization – it could be
something like promising, or contracting, or apologizing, or marrying; something that has evolved
with society.)
14 What is considered a crime is, to some extent at least, a social fact. What social institution
produces this social fact? Give examples to show how this has changed over time and space.
Metaphor
metaphors are appropriate to this area of knowledge?
In Chapter 4, we explored how metaphor could use everyday experience as a tool
for helping us to understand things that were not at all part of everyday experience.
We visualized molecules as being little balls bouncing around giving us a way in to
understanding things like phase transitions and the ideal gas laws. Metaphors allow
us to prime our intuitions by substituting the familiar for the unfamiliar – they act as
intuition pumps.
Metaphors are also useful in the human sciences. Ironically, given the earlier
discussion, they are often taken from physics. Psychology, especially in the hands of
Freud, speaks of forces, psychic energy and drives, balance and equilibrium. This is not
an accident because Freud’s self-proclaimed project was to produce a physics of the
mind, and his whole approach was at its base materialist and mechanistic.
Economics too is fond of physical metaphor. The economy grows and contracts, here
too is balance and equilibrium, momentum and overheating, shake-outs, slack, and
upward and downward movement. But there is an even deeper way in which physical
metaphor attaches to economic thinking. Some of the mathematical ways of describing
economic process are actually equations that are used to describe processes in physics.
The mathematical language of physics is very well suited, in a literal sense, to economics.
As we shall see later (page 158), the flows of money and goods in a national economy can
be modelled by the flow of liquids through a set of pipes. So our metaphors are a good
deal more than just convenient linguistic devices. They are patterns of thinking.
Exercises
15 Make a list of metaphors in your group 3 subject. What purpose do they fulfil?
16 What are the dangers of using metaphors?
17 Can you think of any other intuition pumps (metaphors or not) that help us understand a complex
idea in one of the higher level subjects that you study?
Key concepts in the human sciences
are the roles of the key concepts and key terms that provide
the building blocks for knowledge in this area?
Wild words: culture
Culture and society are key words when discussing the human sciences. We observed
that culture is the collection of social facts and the social institutions that produce
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
Explain why it is difficult to
define or name a social fact
without sounding circular. For
example: ‘Money is what we
treat as being money’. (Hint:
see Chapter 6).
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05 Human sciences

them. But these words are often used interchangeably and we might need a more
explicit definition.
• Society – An organization or a structure of people within defined boundaries.
• Culture – A group’s shared values, beliefs, language, norms, styles, and conventions.
Those living in the slums of a large city might belong to the same society as those
residing in affluent gated communities, but they would have a markedly different
culture – although there might be some blending – due to different lifestyles.
In the end, almost all central ideas in the human sciences are essentially contested
concepts which means, as one student said, ‘They’re wild words, you can’t tame
them and make them settle down like a house cat, so you have to be careful how you
handle them.’
Defining your terms in your TOK essay lets the reader know how you are using one
term rather than another. For example, ‘by culture, I mean …’ – but don’t run to the
dictionary. Use your own understanding.
Operationalizing key terms
Whenever we are dealing in shared knowledge there have to be shared criteria
for deciding whether something is the case or not, and there has to be a way in
which others can look at our results and decide whether they are valid or not. It is
not sufficient to say, ‘Well, in my experience this patient is suffering from clinical
depression.’ In addition, we have to justify our gut feelings by providing either
quantitative measurements or qualitative observations. It is because we are dealing
with shared knowledge that we expect judgements to be grounded in some sort
of testable criteria. This is why we require that the concepts we use are linked to
such criteria or, to use the jargon of this section, why we require that they are
operationalized.
Exercise
Psychologists use criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological
Association (the DSM – we are up to DSM 5) for identifying psychological disorders. This is a very clear
example of operationalizing the terms used for psychological disorders – telling psychologists actually what
to look for in making a diagnosis.
18 Look up the definitions/symptomology of a disorder such as depression in DSM 4 or DSM 5 (you
can find both on the internet), then answer the following questions.
a What are the problems of using such a system for identifying disorders?
b What constitutes a psychological disorder in the first place?
c How can we be sure that these definitions label distinct disorders?
d Is there a sense in which such disorders have a socially constructed component?
e Why might the definition of a condition such as Asperger syndrome or autism prove
controversial?
f There are a number of revisions between DSM 4 and DSM 5 (for example, for the definition of
depression). How can the definition of a disorder change?
g How do these definitions differ from definitions of a standard medical condition such as
measles?
Causes and reasons
Intuitively, we would expect to find that concepts central to the human sciences have
something to do with our will. Often, we do things because we decide to do them.
TOK essays often use
the word ‘culture’ as
synonymous with a
person’s country in an
unthinking way; for
example, ‘the culture
of India’, ‘the culture of
Africa’, ‘Asian culture’,
‘Western culture’, as
though people were all
alike in these so-called
cultures. In fact, within
any population there
can be just as many
differences as similarities.
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Human intention might mark the border between the human and the natural sciences.
So there is an important distinction to be made between things that happen because
we make them happen – which we might call action, and things that happen because
of external causes – which we might call movement. The first has a reason (a human
intention), the second has a cause. Social facts mostly concern reasons not causes.
Two people are married because of their intentions and the purposes of the ceremony
not (at least in a first analysis) because of any cause.
Many people in daily life use the words ‘reason’ and ‘cause’ without much precision.
But take a closer look and there is a profound difference. Could it be that the
elimination of ‘reasons as explanations’ in the hard sciences has removed meaning
and purpose from the word in a literal and technical sense that some people feel at
the emotional level? The earthquake that killed 650000 people in Tangshan, China in
1976 – there was no reason. The tsunami of 2004 – there was no reason. Causes, yes;
reasons, no. The attack on the World Trade Center in the US on 9/11 had reasons and,
according to some people, maybe causes. The collapse of the twin towers had causes.
Can you see the difference? And often we want to have both, which might explain
our wish to project human intentions on the natural world and explain thunder and
lightning in terms of the wrath of Thor.
Exercise
19 How do we best understand each of the events below? Write the word ‘reason’, ‘cause’ or ‘both’
depending on how you ascribe meaning to the events. Explain your answers.
a Coming to school this morning
b Coming late to school
c Buying a car
d Hitting a ball
e Sneezing
f Falling in love
g Women being paid on average less than men
h Preponderance of AIDS in South Africa
Use of language in polls, questionnaires, and surveys
Polls, surveys, and questionnaires are an important way in which human intentions
can be measured. They are used extensively in the human sciences. In some countries,
millions are spent on political polls to try to judge the depth of support for one
candidate or another. In the same vein, big business wants to know how you feel about
a comely tennis star before they fix her smile on their products. And if you think it is
simple, try making a survey yourself. What criticisms could you make of the surveys
you know about? With the advent of social media and web-based surveys, commercial
enterprises of all kinds are gathering data constantly on customer satisfaction. How
the questionnaire is constructed and how the results are interpreted might be a good
subject for a TOK presentation involving language, heuristics such as framing and
anchoring, the use of statistics, and issues of interpreting numbers in the real world.
Exercise
20 How well do you think the clip in weblink 5.2 portrays the dangers of interpreting the results of
questionnaires?
importance of language
in the construction of
questionnaires, visit
weblink 5.2.
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5.4 Methodology
Knowledge framework: Methodology – What are the
methods or procedures used in this area and what is it about
these methods that generates knowledge?
Knowledge framework: Methodology – What counts as a
fact in this area of knowledge?
Alice grew up and Alice grew down, and when she wanted to know how tall she
was, she put her hand on top of her head. That didn’t work, even in Wonderland. It’s
important to have the right method to find out what you need to know.
In this section, we shall examine the actual methods by which the human sciences
come by knowledge. In particular, we shall be interested in the following questions.
• Is there a human scientific method akin to the methods of the natural sciences?
• Are all the human sciences about the mutual interaction between observation and
theory?
• What is it about a human science that makes it possible for us to conduct
experiments in it?
• How does the fact that the object of our inquiry is human affect the way we pursue it?
• How are models used in the human sciences?
• What assumptions about human nature, if any, do we need to make in order to justify
our methods?
Observation and theory in the human sciences
Since the human sciences are about the outside world, there will have to be some
element of observation as part of the process. But because knowledge is a map of
reality, these observations will have to be slotted into a theoretical framework to give
them meaning. It is not clear
exactly which comes first,
it seems like a chicken-and-
egg situation. Theory guides
observation – it tells us what
to look for. But theory must
depend on observation to
get it started. In any case,
it is clear that, just as with
the natural sciences, the
human sciences require
both observation and theory
in mutual interaction. The
model might look something
like Figure 5.1.
Construct
method of
inquiry
Observation
Interpret
and
reflect
Theoretical
framework
Question
Figure 5.1 A simple
model for the production
of knowledge in the human
sciences.
147

Exercises
21 Recall the learner profile attributes: inquirers, knowledgeable, caring, principled, risk-takers,
reflective, thinkers, balanced, communicators, open-minded. Draw arrows on the diagram above
showing where these attributes apply in the production of knowledge.
22 How well does this model apply to the process of producing an extended essay in the IB Diploma
Programme?
The Phillips curve – a detailed example
A good example of the interaction between observation and theory can be found in
the work of the economist AWH Phillips (1914–75). He was interested in two central
concepts in macroeconomics: the rate of unemployment and the rate of inflation
(Table 5.1).
It is worth pointing out at this stage that Table 5.1 shows how abstract ideas of
economic theory have to be ‘cashed out’ in a way that is measurable – they have to be
operationalized. There is some argument about the best way to do this. (Economics
students should find out about the different methods for measuring inflation in the
20th century.)
Phillips did not invent these concepts, they had been part of economic theory
long before he came along. What he did was to propose that there was an inverse
relationship between them: as unemployment fell, inflation would rise and vice versa.
His suggestion was based on a mixture of theory and observation. The starting point
was a theoretical argument that went something like this: the key component of the
price of a good is the wage paid to the workers producing it. When unemployment was
relatively high, workers would be willing to accept lower wage rises rather than join the
increasing mass of unemployed workers. This would cause inflation to be lower. On
the other hand, if unemployment were relatively low, firms would not be able to turn
to a ready pool of labour and would have to offer higher wages to tempt workers from
other firms. This would have the effect of increasing inflation.
The next step was to test this reasoning. Phillips found that a lot of the data for the
UK economy between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century
fitted the hypothesis, as shown in Figure 5.2.
This finding was immensely helpful to government policymakers. It meant that they
could trade off higher inflation for lower unemployment. But it also left them with a
Table 5.1 What the ‘rate of
unemployment’ and the ‘rate
of inflation’ mean and how
they are measured.
Concept Definition Usual method of measurement
rate of
unemployment
(number of people willing and able
to work but without a job)
(total number of people willing
and able to work)
expressed as a
percentage
government statistics about how many
people are claiming unemployment benefit
rate of inflation a sustained rise in general price level expressed as a
percentage increase per year
the prices of a basket of typical household
items is recorded on a yearly basis (these
might be weighted according to their
importance in the typical expenses of a
household) usually expressed as an index with
the base year being 100
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conundrum because it meant that
both were not achievable at the
same time and there would have to
be a compromise. Much economic
policymaking in the late 1960s
focused on achieving an acceptable
balance between the two.
But along came economists Milton
Friedman and Edmund Phelps with a
slightly different set of assumptions
about how labour markets worked.
They thought that pay claims would
automatically take into account
the expected rate of inflation, so
higher inflation would spur on yet
higher wage claims – a so-called
wage–price spiral. The result would
be that a permanent reduction in
unemployment would require a constantly accelerating rate of inflation. If inflation
stabilized, then unemployment would return to its old value, called by economists the
‘natural rate of unemployment’ or NAIRU. This was quite a different theory with really
quite different policy implications.
Who was right? How could economics decide between the two theories? A natural
science would devise an experiment which could distinguish between their different
predictions. But it is difficult to do an experiment with the whole economy of a
country. Instead, Phelps and Friedman looked to existing economic data. Figure 5.3 is
a plot for the years 1960–80. It is clear that the original relationship has now broken
3 4
3.5
0.0
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
4.5 5
Unemployment Rate (percent)
Inflation
Rate
(percent)
5.5 6 7
6.5
Phillips Curve
1967
1966
1964
1965
1963
1962
1961
1960
1968
1969
Figure 5.2 Phillips curve for
the UK economy for 1960–69.
Figure 5.3 Scatter plot
of the unemployment and
inflation rates, quarterly data,
1960–80.
149

down, and there is a situation in which an economy can suffer both from high inflation
and high unemployment: the so-called stagflation (stagnation plus inflation) that was
not possible according to Phillips.
This data seems to show that Phillips was wrong. His theory had to be altered to take
into account expectations of future inflation. Phillips’ supporters also pointed out that
an external shock, namely the huge hike in the oil price in the early 1970s, changed the
mechanism of the whole system.
In this example, the methods of economics do not seem to be so different from those
of the natural sciences. Two different theories giving different predictions are tested
against empirical evidence. Various statistics had to proxy for direct measurement
of relevant variables, but this is something that happens in the natural sciences too.
Perhaps the biggest difference is what happens to the theories after they are compared
to the evidence. In the case of the natural sciences, unsuccessful theories are generally
eliminated from the story. The scientific community rejects them. In the case of
economics, theories are modified and rehabilitated.
Perhaps there are political reasons why economists do not want to let go of the original
ideas of Phillips – in particular the idea that governments should spend more in bad
times to stimulate demand in the economy, an idea that is attractive to many on the
left of the political spectrum. On the other hand, Friedman’s view that increasing the
wages of workers only serves to increase inflation might be more attractive to those on
the political right.
Interestingly there is room, in this example, for political intuitions to play a role –
something that is rare in the natural sciences.
Exercises
23 Is it a strength or a weakness of the methods of economics that there is room for political
intuitions to play a role?
24 Can you identify a real-life situation where political considerations play a role in the actual
methodology of the natural sciences?
25 Why might political considerations play a smaller role in the natural sciences than the human
sciences?
The role of experiment in the human sciences
Clearly, the whole of the economy, in the example above, does not lend itself
easily to experiment. Yet some human sciences (e.g. psychology) are able to
conduct experiments to gather empirical data while others (e.g. social and cultural
anthropology) are not able to in the same way. We might ask what conditions have to
be satisfied by a field in order to be experimental.
Exercise
26 Try to write down a short definition of ‘experiment’.
Did you find this difficult? It is true that a large variety of activities fall under the
umbrella term ‘experiment’. But let us try to produce a working definition. An
experiment sets up a sort of ideal replica in a controlled environment of a situation
in the complex real world in which we are interested. For example, experiments in
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the chemistry lab are ideal replicas of the sort of chemical processes that are going
on in the real world. We can control precisely the nature of the chemical compounds
involved and how they interact as well as other factors which might or might not be
significant such as temperature, pressure, strength of electric field, even the colour of
the experimenter’s socks.
In the human sciences, we might be concerned with putting human beings in certain
situations and then observing how they respond. This could range from giving out a
questionnaire and eliciting a written response to a complex interactive simulation.
This broad definition of an experiment suggests a number of conditions that must hold
in order for a field to use experimental methods.
• It must be possible to create an ideal replica of the real-life situation preserving the
features that we are interested in.
• It must be possible to control the various variables in the experiment.
• It must be possible to interpret the results of the experiment back into the real world.
• Since we are dealing with human beings, the experiment must be ethically
permissible.
Experimenting on the whole economy does not meet three of the four conditions
above. Although there are a number of interesting economic games and simulations
that mimic aspects of the whole economy, it is more likely that economists will use
mathematical models to try to understand how the economy would evolve. But on a
small scale microeconomics can (and does) involve itself in a lot of experiments from
basic questionnaires to behavioural experiments designed to explore how people make
decisions (see below).
Similarly, the whole of society is rather too big to reproduce in the lab so sociologists
might have a hard time doing experiments. Nevertheless, certain questions can be
settled using some sort of experimental data collection. Let us not forget that the
multi-trillion-dollar world advertising industry is really just applied sociology. Vast
resources go into exploring how different groups of people respond to advertisements.
Economic history does not lend itself to experiment any more than ordinary history
does. The past is gone and cannot be replayed. Economic history instead relies
on mathematical modelling found in areas like cliometrics. Using these methods,
economic historians are able to do impressive things such as calculate world GDP back
to the time of Homer.
Perhaps the discipline that is most amenable to experiment is psychology. Unlike
Freudian or Jungian psychology, which dealt more with interaction between a
psychologist and a patient, modern perspectives are predominantly evidence based.
With ingenuity, experiments can be devised that mimic the sort of complex situations
facing the individual human mind. These can be carried out in the lab and, especially
with modern information technology, many of the salient variables can be controlled.
Exercises
27 Find out about the ‘halo effect’ in psychology. What is the experimental evidence for this effect?
28 In general, how can we assess how well an experiment replicates the significant features of the
real-world situation we are interested in?
To learn how behavioural
economists investigate
cheating, visit
weblink 5.3.
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
After watching Dan Ariely’s
entertaining TED talk at the
above weblink, answer these
questions.
• How well do you think
his ingenious experiments
replicate the salient features
in the real world?
• Do you think that his
conclusions are justified on
the basis of the reported
results of his experiments?
151

Ethics and experiments in the human sciences
Knowledge framework: Methodology – What ethical
thinking constrains the methods used to gain knowledge?
The fourth condition above is an ethical constraint limiting experiments on the
grounds that they either violate some right of the experimental subject or that the
consequences are harmful. Clear ethical guidelines are important in disciplines such as
psychology where experiments on human beings and animals are a primary means of
gathering data.
The IB Psychology guide (2009) gives the following guidelines to be applied to all
experimental studies.
• Any experimental study that creates anxiety, stress, pain or discomfort for
participants must not be permitted.
• Any experimental study that involves unjustified deception, involuntary
participation or invasion of privacy, including the inappropriate use of information
and communication technology (ICT), email and the internet, must be avoided. There
may be rare occasions when such infringements cannot be avoided, in which case the
approval of other experienced psychologists should be sought before proceeding.
• All participants must be informed before commencing the experimental study that
they have the right to withdraw at any time. Pressure must not be placed on any
individual participant to continue with the investigation beyond this point.
• Each participant must be informed of the aims and objectives of the research and
must be shown the results of the research.
• Young children should not be used as participants. Experimental studies involving
children need the written consent of parent(s) or guardian(s). Students must ensure
that parents are fully informed about the implications for children who take part in
such research. Where an experimental study is conducted with children in a school,
the written consent of the teachers concerned must also be obtained.
• Participants must be debriefed and given the right to withdraw their own personal
data and responses. Anonymity for each participant must be guaranteed.
• Teachers and students must exercise the greatest sensitivity to local and international
cultures.
• Students must avoid conducting research with any adult who is not in a fit state of
mind and cannot respond freely and independently.
• If any participant shows stress and/or pain at any stage of an experimental study,
the investigation must finish immediately, and the participant must be allowed to
withdraw.
• Non-human animals must not be used for experimental study.
• All data collected must be kept in a confidential and responsible manner and not
divulged to any other person.
• Students must regard it as their duty to monitor the ways in which their peers
conduct research, and to encourage public re-evaluation of any research that
contravenes these guidelines.
• Experimental studies that are conducted online, using ICT methods, are subject to
the same guidelines. Any data collected online must be deleted once the research is
complete. Such data must not be used for any purpose other than the conduct of the
experimental study.
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05 Human sciences

• Students found to have carried out unethical work will be awarded no marks for the
internal assessment component.
Listed below are some classical experiments from social psychology. Choose three
experiments from the list. Find out the aims of the experiments and how they were
conducted. Do they fail any of the IB guidelines?
1 Jane Elliott blue eyes/brown eyes experiment
2 Hawthorne works experiment
3 Stanley Milgram experiment
4 Sherif Robbers cave experiment
5 Stanford prison experiment, Zimbardo et al.
6 David Reimer case
7 Asch conformity experiment
8 Watson ‘Little Albert’ experiment
Exercises
29 Do you consider the IB ethical guidelines in psychology adequate? Are there any extra rules you
would want to add? If so, what are your reasons?
30 Are there any rules that you would want to take away? Why?
31 How do we decide where to balance the interests of the psychological community in advancing
knowledge (that might well give benefits in the future) with the protection of the experimental
subject?
32 Why is it not always possible to tell the subject the aim of the experiment beforehand?
Approaches to observation and experiment
Behaviourism vs humanism
We’ve more than hinted at the huge divide in the human sciences between the
behaviourist and the humanist approaches with our brief discussion about movement
and action, the latter supposedly linked to meaning and purpose, and demanding a
different kind of methodology from one required for movement. Behaviourism or, in
its broader form, positivism is an approach to all the human sciences that stresses the
importance of measurable or observable variables. The behaviourist is suspicious of
any explanation that is grounded in something that cannot be observed. In psychology,
where the term originated, the primary observable is behaviour. Humanism, on the
other hand, is the idea that human experience, thoughts, hopes, and desires are as
much part of any explanation of human activity as behaviour.
These two positions can be nicely illustrated by the simple example of observing
someone drinking.
someone drinking.
Suppose we bring someone into a room and place a glass of water before him. Will
he drink? There appears to be only two possibilities: either he will or he will not …
It is of no help to be told that … ‘he drinks because he is thirsty …’ if it means that
he drinks because of an inner state of thirst. Such a state cannot be observed and if
it cannot be observed it cannot be explained and if it cannot be explained it is not
science.
Skinner, 1980
153

“Now, to paraphrase AJ Ayer, the late British philosopher, consider the same man
with a glass of wine. He either drinks the wine or he does not, but suppose we ask,
when we see him take a sip, what is the meaning of this action? What is going on? Is
he toasting someone, is he measuring the claret for its fineness, or is he celebrating a
private achievement or a soothing a personal anxiety? Perhaps he wants to summon
up his courage as Ayer tells us. Any of these and more could be the explanation, the
reason, the motive, in short the meaning of the action. And to plumb such meaning
would require a knowledge of the man’s intentions within the larger context and the
particular circumstances of the situation.”
The Skinner quotation representing the behaviourist viewpoint, shows the most
radical attempt to eliminate any reference to what we might call purpose or what is
going on inside someone. In this account, all non-observables must be eliminated. Yet,
as we can see from Ayer, the strictly behaviourist approach may well miss the point
(i.e. what is human about this act) by confusing movement and action.
The behaviourist approach is radical because it removes from the picture the usual
internal human reasons for action. This is strange in the context of everyday life because
we are used to giving these reasons as explanations for our behaviour:
A Why did you hit Johnny?
B Because he was annoying me.
But the humanist alternative is not without problems either. Internal reasons are not
directly visible from the outside and have to be inferred from behaviour.
A Why did Katie hit Johnny?
B Because she was annoyed.
A How do you know she was annoyed?
B Because she hit Johnny.
If we are not careful we have a nasty circularity here. Put differently, we cannot falsify
the statement ‘Katie is annoyed’ so it fails Popper’s falsifiability test (Chapter 4).
So behaviourists and any others committed to strictly observable variables argue that
only when social behaviour can be analysed and stripped of all its meaning will we be
able to speak of social sciences, qua sciences, since any kind of meaning, like mental
states, is not observable. Others contend that it is only when we pay attention to, or seek
to discover, the meaning that people attach to their behaviour (what they think they
are doing) will we be able to interpret what is going on and understand this behaviour.
These are two really quite different approaches that might produce controversy
between disciplines and within them.
Interestingly, in psychology both disciples of Freud and evolutionary psychologists
would argue that we are quite good at kidding ourselves about the reasons for a
particular action. To use the terminology of the previous section, the reasons we give
might be quite different from the cause.
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05 Human sciences

Exercise
33 What would someone from another planet make of the following examples?
a A crowd making a lot of noise while 22 men or women chase and kick a spherical object on a
rectangular patch of grass.
b A young man with a bag standing by the side of the road with his arm outstretched and his
thumb pointing up.
c People mumbling with their heads bowed as a box is lowered into the ground.
d People moving about between shelves in a large building, pushing carts with wheels and taking
some things and not others, and putting them in the carts.
Participant observer methodology
While the behaviourist approach and the humanist approach to the methodology of
the human sciences seem irreconcilable, it is possible that they could be combined
into a first-person behaviourist approach. This is called the participant observer
methodology.
• Introspection
There is one person who can directly observe both behaviour and its reasons: the
experimental subject. If we use the subject’s first-person reports as evidence in the
investigation, then we can directly observe the reasons for action, pleasing both the
behaviourist and the humanist. This is sometimes known as the verstehen approach in
the human sciences after the German word for ‘understanding’. We could summarize
it with the phrase, ‘What was it like for me?’
This method underlies much research that is conducted using surveys and
questionnaires. The expectation is that experimental subjects will give direct and
accurate responses to questions about their reasons.
But, and we are getting used to this by now in TOK, this approach does produce
problems of its own. Most of these arise from doubts about the reliability of first-
person testimony (particularly about a person’s own motivations). We cannot avoid
the sneaking feeling that perhaps we don’t really know why we acted in the way we
did. It could be that Freud and the evolutionary psychologists are right and that we can
have motives for action that don’t make it to consciousness.
And then there is always the question of whether the responder answered the
questions honestly. In some situations, especially where the questions are about
delicate or sensitive matters, the responder might be embarrassed to answer honestly
even if the survey is anonymous. The answers to the questions might have implications
for self-esteem and there might be a tendency to try to preserve a positive self-image.
Finally, there are a number of processes subconsciously affecting our judgement. For
example, reports such as in a sample of European males, 95% thought they were better
drivers than average. Similarly 94% of a TOK class thought they were above average
intelligence. If by ‘average’ we mean the median (the middle value), then by definition
only 50% can be above average. The others just kidded themselves. This is an example
of a heuristic called positivity bias. We tend to overestimate our own abilities and
underestimate those of others.
There are two types of
behaviourism. Be careful
that you do not confuse
them. Methodological
behaviourism,
discussed here, is the
idea that behaviour is the
only ‘observable’ in the
human sciences. Logical
behaviourism is the
radical view that there is
nothing more to human
beings than behaviour.
Feeling pain, in this view,
is precisely the same as
behaving in a certain
way. It is fair to say that
logical behaviourism
has not withstood the
considerable criticism it
has received and is no
longer taken seriously
by all but a handful
of thinkers. Critics
of methodological
behaviourism ridicule the
use of animals such as
rats in the laboratory as
proxies for human beings.
155

Exercise
34 Identify an investigation in a group 3 subject that requires introspection. Assess whether the use of
introspection in this case is a valid investigative tool. List your reasons.
• The observer as part of the system
In Chapter 4, we discuss the basic problem of observation – that any observation
necessarily requires an interaction with the system being observed – and can therefore
change it. This is no less true in the human sciences. We shall discuss this issue through
taking a detailed look at anthropology.
The IB course is called ‘Social and cultural anthropology’, a subset of the overall
discipline of anthropology. In the subject guide, it is defined as:
discipline of anthropology. In the subject guide, it is defined as:
… the comparative study of culture and human societies … seeking an
understanding of humankind in all its diversity … reached through the study of
societies and cultures and the exploration of the general principles of social and
cultural life.
Methods mentioned include ‘a tradition of participant observation’, and ‘an in-depth
empirical study of social groups’.
How do we reconcile our knowledge that we can never be objective with the
assumptions of some disciplines that objectivity is taken for granted?
Are the findings of the natural sciences as reliable as those of the human sciences?
Who validates knowledge?
Do cultural differences limit mutual understanding?
IB Social and cultural anthropology guide
Many of the foundational studies conformed somewhat to the stereotype picture of
the study of small groups far from the university centres where research began. Today,
in sociology and anthropology, fieldwork is as likely to be set in an urban environment
or to focus on how people live together in nursing homes, prisons, small artisanal
farming communities, the circus, or life aboard a marine biology research vessel.
In answering the fundamental question of the anthropologist – what it is to be human
– and the specific questions guiding the study, the participant observer spends time
gathering information that is both wide-ranging and detailed, which is eventually
published as an ethnography. Although quantitative data is part of the study, the final
product seldom looks like the graphs and mathematical relationships found in, say, the
economist’s dissertation. The mode of expression is most likely a narrative setting out
the findings of the investigation. For instance, one research question might be, ‘What
child-rearing practices in a refugee Haitian community change as a result of a new
environment in a new country?’
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Exercise
35 The German thinker Hans Georg Gadamer (2004) argues that to truly understand a culture, you
have to be of that culture. He suggests that contact with an alien culture has the effect of making
you more aware of your own culture, a process he calls the ‘fusing of horizons’.
a To what extent do you agree with Gadamer?
b What evidence do you have for your view?
c How does the anthropologist, perhaps of a privileged background, integrate into the lives of
the group he or she is studying?
d How would the status of an anthropologist affect his or her work investigating the Haitian
refugee community?
e Since you don’t have to be a baby to study babies – do you have to be a criminal to study
criminals? Or old to study nursing homes? Or a man to study men? Or a musician to study
musicians? Or a widow to study grieving? Why or why not?
By intention, the ethnographer brings his or her own subjectivity and experience to
bear on the study, which reminds us that sense perception (as a WOK) is shaped by
social and psychological assumptions and value judgements. In short, the observer
is the instrument through which the phenomena of the investigation are selected
and interpreted as well as evaluated in making this particular map of reality. The best
ethnographers need to work their way into the lives of people and at the same time
keep an analytic distance. This requires cleverness, empathy, sympathetic imagination,
tolerance, and warmth of personality. People must feel safe with you around.
But just as with introspection, there might be parallel problems with the participant
observer. To what extent does presence of the observer change what is being observed?
The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901–78) made many important
contributions to our understanding of, among other things, attitudes towards sex
in South Pacific cultures. Her book Coming of Age in Samoa about female sexuality in
Samoa was extremely influential. It drew on methods of a participant observer gaining
the confidence of the society in which she was embedded in order to be granted access
to their traditions and knowledge. Despite her influence, her work sparked controversy.
After her death, the New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman suggested that
she had been the subject of misinformation and joking by the Samoan girls in her
confidence who, he suggested, had exaggerated or even invented their accounts of
traditional practices. The controversy continues to this day although Mead’s reputation
seems to have survived the challenge.
This example illustrates how difficult it is for the human sciences to produce definitive
theory that is above controversy, since there is little way in which contestable claims
can be definitively assessed. Participant observer methodology is not without its
problems.
Exercises
36 Can you think of a situation where the behaviour of a group of people being observed is affected
by the presence of an observer?
37 How can the ‘observer effect’ be reduced or eliminated in this situation?
38 Look up the ‘Hawthorne effect’ in a psychology textbook or on the internet. Can you identify
other situations where the presence of an observer has improved the productivity of those being
observed?
157

The role of mathematical models in the human sciences
Knowledge framework: Methodology – What role do
models play in this area of knowledge?
The key to understanding the role of mathematical models in the human sciences is
the observation that such models can be used to gain a general understanding of a
phenomenon without being complex or detailed enough to provide predictions. After
all, if knowledge is a simplified map of the real world, there are two elements here that
need to be balanced: simplicity and accuracy. In the human sciences, a model that is
accurate might not be simple and vice versa. A good example here is the model used
by the UK Treasury to map the whole of the UK economy. It is precise but complex.
This is not to say that there are not good predictive models it is just that, in general, the
human sciences prefer models that might be more explanatory than predictive.
Economics is well known for its use of models. In the 19th and early 20th centuries,
economics looked increasingly towards the natural sciences. The aim was to produce
a rigorous, almost experimental, discipline that used the same sort of modelling
techniques as physics. In some cases, literal physical models were used. One such
model is the machine built by Newlyn and Philips in 1949. The UK economy was
modelled by the flow of coloured water round an intricate system of pipes, float
chambers, and tanks. The tanks and pipes were shaped carefully to reflect the sort
of relationships that were thought to hold between different
economic variables, and were arranged to mimic the different
time lags between an action in one part of the economy and
its effect in another. Readings were made of the water level in
various chambers corresponding to government debt, interest
rates, and GDP, and the device was attached to a chart to record
the dynamic behaviour of the model.
Today, such a mechanistic model would be implemented by a
computer program but the essential features would be the same.
As we saw in the section on language and concepts, the use of
physical metaphors in economics goes very deep.
Modern economic models reflect the idea that the fundamental
relationships are not deterministic and law-like, as are those of
classical physics, but are susceptible to chance. They reflect the
intuition that although we are all free, within certain limits, to
act as we wish, our behaviour generally follows certain statistical
patterns. Many contemporary economic models are statistical.
You can access a version of the UK Treasury model online at the
weblink on the left, above. Try out the consequences of reducing
income tax or indirect taxes, increasing social benefits, and
changing interest rates. The model produces charts that trace the
predicted course of unemployment, government debt, balance of
payments, and inflation for up to five years after the intervention
by the user.
The Newlyn–Philips water
model of the UK economy
(Leeds University Economics
department).
To learn more about
the UK Treasury’s
economic model, visit
weblink 5.4.
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05 Human sciences

Exercises
39 What are the benefits of such a sophisticated mathematical model as this?
40 In what sense might the very sophistication of such a model be a disadvantage?
It is not only in economics that we find statistical modelling. Almost every human
science employs statistical models of one sort or another. Here are two examples of the
use of mathematical models in basketball by Jennifer Fewell and Dieter Armbruster of
Arizona State University.
The research team used network analysis to analyse basketball games. They turned the
players into nodes in a network and passes into paths. Then they could create a chart
that maps the most likely ball movements. The thicker the arrow, the more likely the
ball is to follow this path. Here are the charts from the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers
in the 2010 NBA playoffs.
To produce a single number for each graph, the researchers borrowed a technique
from theoretical physics – they calculated the entropy or amount of system disorder.
They discovered that winners in general had more entropy than losers. It seems that
random unpredictable passing wins games.
role of models in the
2008 economic crisis,
visit pearsonhotlinks.com,
weblink 5.5.
Which team won the match?
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
Having read the article in The
Economist, to what extent do
you think article blames the
crisis on models (in particular,
macro models such as the
dynamic stochastic general
equilibrium model)?
159

It might surprise you (if you have not seen the film Moneyball) that complex
mathematical models could be used in sport. But these days, it is difficult to find a
sport untouched by mathematical and statistical modelling. Do you think that the use
of ‘big data’ in sport detracts from the spontaneous theatre that sport produces?
But it is not only in sport where statistical modelling produces highly effective real-
world strategy. In the world of political forecasting, modelling is proving to be far more
effective than traditional political pundits. Mathematical models are proving very
accurate at predicting the results of elections. In 2008, Nate Silver used his models to
correctly call 49 states out of 50; in 2012 he got them all right despite being ridiculed
by the media pundits.
Exercises
After reading The Economist article on statistical models and predictive policing (weblink 5.7), answer the
following questions.
41 Identify the benefits stated in the article for directing police resources to the ‘pink’ squares
identified by the model.
42 What might be the risks associated with such a policy?
43 What are the ethical issues of using statistical models for making decisions to do with parole or the
profiling of potential offenders?
44 Does the use of mathematical models in baseball, basketball, football, cricket, rugby, or Australian
rules football in any sense detract from the enjoyment of the sport?
Also recommended are the following books:
• Emanuel Derman, Models Behaving Badly, Wiley 2011
• Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics, Allen Lane 2010
• Mark Buchanan, Forecast, Bloomsbury, 2013.
Assumptions underlying the methodology of the human
sciences
We saw in Chapter 4 that the methods of the natural sciences only work if we make
certain prior assumptions about what the universe is like – for example that it is
uniform and that our particular part of the universe is not somehow special. When
human beings form the subject matter of our investigation, it is clear that we are only
concerned with our own local corner of the universe so we can relax some of these
assumptions. Instead of the uniformity of the whole cosmos, we are concerned just
with the uniformity of human beings – human nature.
Human nature
Many of the human sciences make assumptions about human nature. By ‘human
nature’ we mean the set of traits and capacities that we all have in common. In political
science, the classical theorists used the device of the ‘state of nature’ as a way of
thinking about the origins of political order. They imagined what human beings would
be like outside political structures like the state. For example, the Florentine political
theorist Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) assumed that without strong government,
human beings were likely to be lazy and corrupt. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) took
a similar view and thought that left to our own devices we would be fearful of cut-
throat competition for resources, which would motivate us to form a political society
to protect ourselves from each other. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) had a more
To learn more about
Nate Silver and his
statistical models, visit
weblink 5.6.
To learn more about
statistical models and
predictive policing, visit
weblink 5.7.
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
Clearly the sorts of model
that Nate Silver produces
make the assumption that,
given large enough numbers,
people behave in law-like
ways that can be quantified.
All those idiosyncratic
individual choices fit a
nice smooth probability
distribution. To what extent
do you agree with this? Does
this sort of modelling need
a strong assumption about
human nature?
You will learn more about this
in the next section.
To learn more about
Nate Silver’s analysis, visit
weblink 5.8.
160
05 Human sciences

positive view of man in the state of nature as a somewhat solitary peaceable figure: the
noble savage. It was the effect of social institutions (such as money and social status)
that was corrupting.
There might be a grain of truth in all these views. Jonathan Haidt (Chapter 9) suggests
that we have evolved five moral capacities: caring, fairness, ingroup loyalty, respect
for authority, and purity that control our moral natures. The first two are particularly
valued by political liberals and might be associated with Rousseau’s picture, while
political conservatives value all five capacities and place more emphasis on the last
three, a position more in keeping with Machiavelli and Hobbes.
A deeper problem might be the question of whether humans have a nature at all. The
view that we do not tends to be associated with the philosopher John Locke (1632–
1704). He saw the human being as a tabula rasa (blank slate) at birth and that we are
shaped by our subsequent experiences. This view was attractive to those who thought,
in the 1960s and 70s, that socialization was the only cause of differences between sexes
and that there was no essential male or female nature. More recently, writers such as
Janet Radcliffe Richards have shown that arguments for gender equality do not have to
assume the lack of essential nature. Moreover, the psychologist Steven Pinker (1954–)
points out that in order for environment to have any effect on us at all, we must have
the inbuilt capacity (human nature) to be able to learn from our experiences. He argues
that evolution has equipped us at birth with a large number of systems all ready to go to
enable us to survive and flourish as human beings. As an appendix to his book The Blank
Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Pinker (2003) provides a list of 320 features of
human beings observed by anthropologists in every known human society. Some of
these features are listed in the chart below. The implication is that the list of features
and capacities we all share is far from being negligible, and that the blank slate theory is
false.
Some human universal features
abstraction in speech and thought aesthetics baby talk
universal facial expressions crying politeness
beliefs in supernatural/religion binary cognitive distinctions body adornment
childhood fear of strangers classification of colours classification of kin
classification of sex collective identities conflict
conjectural reasoning cooking customary greetings
culture division of labour dream interpretation
explanation facial expressions of anger, contempt,
disgust, fear, happiness, sadness,
surprise
females do more direct childcare
folklore food sharing attempts to predict future
admiration of generosity gift giving distinguishing good and bad
gossip government grammar
group living hairstyles hospitality
To learn more about
Haidt’s views, visit
weblink 5.9.
(continued)
161

incest taboos in-group distinguished from out-
groups
inheritance rules
insulting interpreting behaviour jokes
language language employed to misinform or
mislead others
law (rights and obligations)
leaders logical notions male/female adult/child seen as having
different natures
males more aggressive and more
prone to lethal violence
marriage murder proscribed
music numerals personal names
past/present/future play poetry/rhetoric
preference for own children and close
kin
promise right-handedness as population norm
wary of snakes social structure sweets preferred
true and false distinguished turn taking visiting
Options
are treated
as given
Reason
Start with
a number of
options
Evaluate
benefits and
costs of
each option
Choose option
with greatest
net benefit
Figure 5.4 Classical model
of judgement.
Assumptions of rationality and heuristics
The human sciences also make assumptions about the nature of human rationality.
Rationality means the processes we use for making decisions and judgements. It differs
from logic in that it might change over time and
between cultures. The new TOK programme
recognizes that what might be a rational course
of action in one epoch might not be thought
to be so in another. It makes sense to study the
history of our systems of knowledge to observe
how norms of rationality change over time
(as do our methods of inquiry, standards of
evidence, and interests).
But how exactly does human rationality depart
from logic? The key lies in reason, intuition,
and emotion. The weaker essays in TOK
typically treat these WOKs as somehow being
independent of each other. As we saw in Chapter
3, this is not helpful. They work together in such
a way as to make them difficult to separate.
Let us consider the everyday problem about
making a decision. One model might be that
the individual looks at each option in turn,
evaluating it according to some criterion (call
it utility) and then chooses the option that
yields the greatest utility. We might call this
model the classical model of judgement making
(Figure 5.4).
162
05 Human sciences

An alternative model might be that the person uses imagination, intuition, emotion,
and reason together to set out what options (from an infinite set) might be possible.
Then the individual first judges which of them ‘feels right’ and then provides reasons.
The individual might then discuss the judgement with others and modify it in the light
of this discussion. This is the social intuitionist model and seems to be more in line
with what we actually do when we make judgements (Figure 5.5).
What is interesting about this model is that in some cases, especially when we have
to make very quick judgements, we place a good deal more reliance on intuition
and emotion than we might place on mathematical-style reasoning. This is well
demonstrated not only in everyday decision-making, but also when we make moral or
ethical judgements (Chapter 9 – discussion of Jonathan Haidt).
But it then seems important to ask how the quality of the judgement might be affected
by factors that are below the radar of our consciousness, the factors that go into
providing the intuition or the emotion, the facts that make the judgement ‘feel right’.
There is a whole field devoted to studying how human beings make such judgements.
It is called ‘behavioural economics’ and has been around since the pioneering work
of Amos Tversky (1937–96) and Daniel Kahnemann (1934–) in the late 1960s.
Kahnemann won the Nobel prize for Economics in 2002 for this work which falls
under the general title of Prospect theory.
Produce options
Imagination
Intuition
Emotion
Language
Reason
Choose option that
feels right
Intuition
Emotion
Produce reasoned
justification
Reason
Language
Check with others
(this is the
social part)
Language
Figure 5.5 Social
intuitionist model of
judgement.
163

So what did Kahnemann and Tversky notice about human rationality? They built on
the work of previous psychologists who suggested that, broadly speaking, human
beings had two reasoning systems (Table 5.2).
System 1 – Automatic system System 2 – Reflective system
uncontrolled controlled
effortless effortful
associative deductive
fast slow
unconscious self-aware
skilled rule-following
Extract Cues
Intuition
Emotion
Sense perception
Recognise patterns
Reason
Language
Imagination
Memory
Action scripts
Mental simulation
Mental models
Action
Intuition
Emotion
Imagination
Reason
Situation
The automatic system (system 1) saves our lives. If
something is coming rapidly towards us, with staring eyes
and an open mouth showing large fangs, we could sit down
and reason that ‘it might be dangerous but on the other
hand it might be benign’, but by that time we might well be
dead. No, the automatic system cuts in and says, ‘Run!’ It
does this primarily by invoking the emotion of fear. That is
why we might sometimes be afraid of a perfectly harmless
spider or even piece of string. It is better, in evolutionary
terms, to make the error of thinking the piece of string is a
snake rather than the other way round. Through evolution,
organisms with developed, fast intuitive automatic systems
have been selected for. An example of such an organism is
the human being.
Unfortunately, the automatic system can let us down.
Try to answer the following questions as fast as possible
without actually stopping and reasoning them out.
•If a bat costs 1 dollar more than a ball and they cost
US$1.10 together, how much does the ball cost?
•The patch covered by water-lilies on a lake doubles every
day. If it takes 48 days to cover the lake, how long does it
take to cover half the lake?
•If it takes 4 men 4 days to make 4 widgets, how many days
does it take 16 men to make 16 widgets?
Did you give the answers 10 cents, 24 days and 16 days? If you did, then you were
fooled by your automatic system. In the first question, if the ball cost 0.10 dollars, then
the bat would cost 1.10 dollars and together they would cost 1.20 dollars. The correct
answer is that the ball costs 5 cents.
The automatic system relies on heuristics – rules of thumb. They are at work when
you make any sort of judgement. Here is an example.
Table 5.2 Two reasoning
systems in humans.
Figure 5.6 Recognition
primed decision-making
model of judgement.
164
05 Human sciences

Which of these options would you prefer?
• Option A Receive 200 dollars cash
• Option B Play a game where you have 1/5 probability of receiving 1200 dollars
Probabilistically speaking, the expected payout is 200 dollars for option A and 240
dollars for option B. Nevertheless, most people go for option A. Classically speaking,
this choice is not rational. But our automatic system prefers it. This is an example of the
risk-averse heuristic. We tend to be risk-averse in situations where we are presented
with a gain.
Here is another example. Suppose you have committed a minor motoring offence
such as parking your car in a no-parking zone. The parking attendant happens to be
interested in behavioural economics and offers you two choices.
Which of these would you prefer?
• Option A Pay 200 dollars cash fine
• Option B 1/5 probability of paying 1200 dollars
Now the heuristic is reversed. Most people facing this judgement go for option B even
though it has a higher expected payout. It seems that we are risk-embracing when it
comes to losses. This is a system 1 choice – the automatic system. From the point of
view of system 2, option A is better. This is called the risk-embracing heuristic.
This heuristic brings the wording of the question sharply into focus. If the question is
framed as a gain then we are risk-averse. If the question is framed as a loss then we are
risk-embracing. But it might be the same question. Unsurprisingly, this phenomenon is
called framing.
There is a related heuristic called anchoring. We tend to make quantitative judgements
by setting up a reference point and measuring a deviation from it. Consider Figure 5.7
which shows offers in two different shops for the same item.
Classical (system 2) reasoning suggests that it doesn’t matter which we go for since
they both cost the same. But it is a fairly good bet that more people will go for offer A
because they consider it to be a better bargain (system 1 reasoning). They are anchored
to the old price so perceive offer A to be a gain.
Anchoring is used to great effect in negotiations. The first bid made tends to be used
as a reference bid against which concessions can be measured. This is the principle
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
Gary Klein is a psychologist
who has developed an
explanation of how we
make rapid decisions under
pressure. Use a search engine
to find out more about the
recognition primed decision
model (RPD) shown in Figure
5.6 (opposite), and see if you
can answer the following
questions.
1 To what extent is Klein’s
model (as a piece of human
science) testable?
2 Is it plausible?
3 Do you think that it is
useful?
4 What applications can you
envisage for it?
Offer A Offer B
Offer A Offer B
$699 $199
$399 $399
Figure 5.7 Which offer do
you go for?
165

behind bargaining in the bazaar, pay negotiations, and discussions with the teacher
about the date of the essay deadline.
There are many more heuristics that work in a systematic and predictable way affecting
how we make judgements. They are a consequence of system 1 thinking – a product of
our automatic system. We have seen that they are a part of human rationality.
But here is the problem: classical economics, classical political theory, and classical
ethics assume primarily that system 2 is in charge – they assume the classical model of
judgement. But the work mentioned above shows that this is not what human beings
are actually like. We do have a nature that is embedded in our system 1 thinking and it
has a big impact on our behaviour.
Contemporary microeconomics reflects these developments and builds in realistic
heuristic models of human decision-making. Contemporary ethics is beginning to
catch up and question the classical basis on which ethical judgements were supposed
to rest. Psychology and sociology are safe – they have never assumed that humans
were classically rational.
Exercise
45 Find out as much as you can about the following heuristics:
framing, availability, planning fallacy, positivity bias, negativity bias, representativeness, affect
heuristic, conjunction fallacy, prospect theory
How many of these heuristics do you recognize in your own behaviour?
There is much literature on heuristics, a lot of it online. For an entertaining and
readable account, see Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (2008), published by Harper.
5.5 Historical development
Knowledge framework: Historical development – What is
the significance of the key points in the historical development
of this area of knowledge?
Knowledge framework: Historical development – How has
the history of this area led to its current form?
We have already hinted that knowledge as a map is continually changing. We can
see that if we look at school textbooks over the years: while a single textbook might
appear settled if not fixed, looking at their evolution in time often reveals changes. The
creation of knowledge is difficult, but tremendously exciting. New ideas not only have
to be tested and pass the mark of peer review, but well-established theories, methods,
and modes of explanation do not give way easily. And why should they? In many cases
they have stood the test of time and represent a coherent system of understanding the
world – they have done a job well and there is a reluctance to replace them. Remember,
a new mode of explanation has to explain everything that was covered by the old and
more besides.
166
05 Human sciences

Exercise
46 What does it mean to say that the burden of proof rests on the paradigm shifters? Do you agree?
Give reasons.
Anthropology
We can easily find examples of such changes. A good example is the dramatic
paradigm shift in anthropology initiated by Franz Boas. In simple if not simplistic
terms, prior to Boas there was an understanding among anthropologists that ‘the
deeper you dug, the simpler the structure’. In other words, there was a trend in human
societies from simple to complex. This was often stated using some version of the
words ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’. Of course, the implication was that the culture
of the anthropologist was the current endpoint of the social evolutionary chain and
therefore the most ‘civilized’. Boas changed this and got rid of the idea of a hierarchy of
societies altogether. Anthropologists should observe and record what they see without
passing any sort of judgement about where a society lay on some abstract spectrum of
civilization.
Boas would stand behind the philosophy and mission of the IB to view others as a rich
source of diversity who ‘in their differences, can also be right’.
Anthropologist Clifford Geertz fought for the view that meaning and interpretation
are the key concepts in anthropology. He thought the attempt to raise consciousness
had succeeded, because people were more aware of gender concerns than before.
Psychology
Psychology has gone through a number of transformations, although vestiges of
previous ways of thinking can still be found today. Freud was a hugely influential
figure with his elaborate theoretical structure explaining human psychosis as largely
developmental in its origin. His understanding of mental processes below the level of
consciousness proved to be prescient and his emphasis on sexuality has been partially
validated by contemporary thinking in evolutionary psychology. However, his theories
of child development seem rather dated now.
Psychology has moved on through phases of behaviourism, through functionalism to
modern conceptions such as cognitive psychology, attachment theory, and positive
psychology. Evolutionary psychology – the understanding of psychological processes
through references to their biological and evolutionary origin is particularly strong
currently, and one might expect further developments in this area.
Economics
In economics, there was the transformation from the rational utilitarian approach
of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill to modern behavioural and statistical economics. The
classical economists built their theory from three basic ideas: opportunity cost,
diminishing marginal utility, and the assumption that man wanted to maximize utility
or satisfaction. From this they showed that markets would develop which matched
suppliers and demanders in such a way as to maximize the utility of each group and, at
the same time, convert their selfish motives into an optimum allocation of resources
for the whole of society.
Franz Boas (1858–1942).
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
You will recall from the
Chapter 4 that Karl Popper
asked us to try to falsify our
hypotheses, not try to prove
them. Critics claim that one
of the key concepts central to
Freudian thought – repression
– was not falsifiable. Can you
see how this could be true?
167

Modern insights show us increasingly clearly that this is mistaken. Not only are its
fundamental assumptions flawed but it is also a formula for ecological disaster. If we
were to think of economics solely in terms of how to allocate resources in order to
maximize human happiness, we would end up plundering the planet of its precious
and non-renewable supplies of stuffs necessary for the maintenance of human life.
Moreover, the markets envisaged by Smith are insensitive to whether the goods
provided are ethically or morally desirable. Free markets produced child prostitution
in Victorian London. Not all human wants are fit to be satisfied through the market.
Something else is needed – some other way of thinking about making good lives for
human beings.
Change in the development of human sciences
Knowledge is a dynamic map of reality. It changes as our interests change, as our
conceptual frameworks change, and as our methods change. In the human sciences,
these changes tend to be changes in emphasis. They are rarely like their counterparts
in the natural sciences, complete changes in direction. There are still Keynesians and
Monetarists, there are still Freudians and Jungians, and probably other behaviourists
around. Rarely has theory been categorically refuted in the human sciences.
Ideal knower Amartya Sen
Contemporary economics is beginning to recognize these issues. The Indian
economist Amartya Sen (1933–) was awarded the Nobel Prize 1998 for his work in
producing an alternative approach to Smith and Ricardo, in which the capabilities of
human beings are recognized for what they are, not in terms of their exchange value. In
Sen’s eyes, human beings are reservoirs of potential for flourishing lives, not resources,
to be exploited. He has contributed greatly to our understanding of welfare economics.
More than this, he has shown that there is room in economics for a different approach
that does not treat human beings and their natural environments as resources to be
exploited.
Sen was born in Santiniketan in India and studied at Presidency College, Calcutta and
Trinity College, Cambridge. He has taught at universities in both these cities as well as
the University of Delhi, LSE, Oxford, and Harvard. Much of his work has been in social
choice theory, a body of economic literature inspired by the ideas of Kenneth Arrow.
In 1951, Arrow used an abstract mathematical formalism to show that, under some
fairly mild conditions, no system could be devised that converted ranked preferences
of individuals into a community-wide ranking in a consistent way. How public bodies
produce social decisions and the effect of these decisions on welfare became his major
concern.
Sen writes in his Nobel biography (1998) about his experiences in Dhaka before the
partition:
partition:
I had to observe, as a young child, some of the mindless violence [of sectarian
Hindu and Muslim communities in India]. One afternoon in Dhaka, a man came
through the gate … bleeding profusely. [He was] a Muslim daily labourer called
Kader Mia … He had been knifed on the street by some community thugs in our
largely Hindu area. As he was being taken to the hospital by my father, he went on
Amartya Sen (1933–).
168
05 Human sciences

5.6 Links to personal knowledge
Knowledge framework: Links to personal knowledge –
Why is this area significant to the individual?
What are the implications of this area of knowledge for one’s
own individual perspective?
What is the nature of the contribution of individuals to this area?
Part of who you are and what you think (if these are different) come down to your
responsibility to make up your own mind about the ideas that will furnish your mind.
Innovation is often exciting and open-mindedness is to be commended, but a healthy
scepticism is also a fine feature of the TOK student. How you will manage your life
between the new ideas that tempt your assent and the rubbish that the charlatans will
throw your way is still a personal human balancing act. To paraphrase Einstein, ‘If most
of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas
and shoddy philosophies.’
In our first look at personal knowledge linked to the human sciences, we are not
talking about knowledge that cannot be shared because it is ineffable, tacit, and
difficult to express. Here we are talking about that piece of the overlapping circles
where personal knowledge intersects with shared knowledge, the awareness that as
we map our life’s journey, our own map is unique. While it is true that most of our
knowledge is shared – it comes from and refers back to others – and while we share
this knowledge with a number of different groups each with its own perspective, it is
equally true at some point that our personal knowledge is ours alone to accept, refine,
or reject as we meet new ideas and new experiences.
The AOKs called history, ethics, art, maths, and science tell us much about the map of
a world that is larger than we can think about consciously at any one time. Moreover,
saying that his wife had told him not to go into a hostile area during the communal
riots. But he had to go to ours in search of work and earning because his family had
nothing to eat. The penalty of economic unfreedom turned out to be death, which
occurred later on in the hospital. The experience was devastating for me, and
suddenly made me aware of the dangers of narrowly defined identities, and also of
the divisiveness that can lie buried in communitarian politics. It also alerted me to
the remarkable fact that economic unfreedom, in the form of extreme poverty, can
make a person a helpless prey in the violation of other kinds of freedom. Kader Mia
need not have come to a hostile area in search of income in those troubled times if
his family could have managed without it.
169

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